Tenants on the south side of East 103rd Street launched the East Harlem Tenant Union Saturday morning.
Dropping a banner from their building windows reading “Back Off Our Block” and vowing to fight any speculative buyer seeking to profit from years of landlord neglect. The banner drop and press conference came less than a month before a June 10 foreclosure auction of the roughly 850-unit portfolio formerly owned by real estate investor Emerald Equity Group.
Organized with the support of Community Voices Heard, tenants described conditions inside their homes that have gone unaddressed for years: water leaking between apartments, broken fixtures, no heat in winter, persistent mold, and rat infestations so severe that one tenant found a rat in her toilet. The buildings carry more than 2,300 housing code violations across 38 properties…